Let's cover the latest races of the CT teams as well, before heading into the season finale!
Period Ranking: October
Sure, as in PCT, there's an August race pending - but the rest is really just October races. And it's a pretty special update - there are only stage races covered this time! Let's first look at the October ones, before talking about the big, fat one.
First on the schedule was Tour du Maroc. As an HC race, there wasn't a strong CT presence in North Africa - and the CT teams combined didn't even score 100 points. More than half, namely 50 out of 95 points, went to Jura - thereof 35 to Aregger with two 3rd place finishes and 3rd in the points standings, plus Mäder picking up a couple of GC and U25 points. Tryg got even more of the latter thanks to Zimmermann, with Sleen contributing 1 point to their 23 points tally. Which means that 22 points remain for Air New Zealand, scored by Fabbro (who was the highest CT finisher in 24th) and Shalunov. This was - without much surprise - the lowest scoring race of the month for CT teams.
Onto Herald Sun Tour then, the final C2 stage race of the year. Without much interference from PCT, we saw the top CT sprinters battling it out on four flat stages - and the TTers fighting for the decisive stage and therefore the GC win. We did see a rare 1-2 GC result by Jura TTers Rekita and Marchewka - and if that hadn't been enough, sprinter Stepniak also added a stage win. That's 207 points for the division leaders.
All other teams finished below 100 points - and it was pretty close for the next spots. Tryg ended up 2nd with 93 points, with Frison taking the final GC podium spot, and Kanter getting a stage win and some more strong results. Definitely a great result to keep their late push for promotion going!
90 points went to Colmobini - and who else but Saber could have been their top scorer? The Moroccan contributed a stage win and the green jersey - while Laizer also did a great job by finishing 5th in the GC. A honorable mention to Staffbase, who finished just another 3 points down thanks to Predatsch's 4th place GC finish and Lietaer's KoM jersey.
Euskal Bizikleta also saw a strong CT presence - and just like the first C1 race of the year, Jura also rocked the last one, even being the 2nd highest scoring team overall. Moscon and Masnada with their 5th and 7th places in the GC - the former also contributing a stage podium - brought 132 points back to Switzerland. They also won the team standings, by the way.
Teuns was doing great as well, being the second highest CT finisher - and so Le Creuset went home with 50 points in the bag. Which wasn't a whole lot more than BNZ's 46, though, scored by Rajovic's sprints and Schultz's GC (12th).
But the biggest race - in terms of scoring, and promotion fight impact - obviously was the Tour of America. And there's clearly no way past Tryg in this race. Hoelgaard's KoM jersey, alongside three stage podiums, Zimmermann's white jersey and 8th place GC finish, and Krieger's stage win - all this and more is worth 246 points - the 2nd highest score of a CT team behind Glanbia's insane Olympia's Tour! They were the 7th highest scoring team in ToA, leaving behind quite some PCT competitors!
And they were the best CT team (almost) by a landslide, with McCormick scoring less than half as much! Their 113 points mainly are due to Kuss and Hoehn both finishing inside the GC Top 15 (with the latter getting 2nd in U25) - plus 2nd place in the team standings!
BNZ weren't that far behind the Americans, with Vasyliv being the highest CT finisher in the GC in 7th place. Nizzolo and Edmondson - the latter getting the team's only stage podium - contributed some points as well.
And that's already all the race covered! What does this mean for the period ranking?
Well, despite not racing in America, Jura are on top of the list with 389 points. They were the highest scoring CT team in all three of their races - everything just fell into place for them.
The latter is however pretty much true for Tryg as well - be it in America, or in Australia, making up for some earlier underperformances. 362 points is a fantastic yield for them as well!
And it's 198 points more than the "best of the rest", with BNZ scoring 164 points in these races. The gaps are much smaller behind them, though, as BWT and McCormick follow with 140 and 137 points respectively.
Colombini, Air New Zealand and Glanbia are the final teams above 100 points - with Bonduelle missing out by the smallest of margins.
At the bottom, Tafjord has zero points - simply due to not racing at all. They'll have a double-header on the final day of the year instead.
Bianchi and Caja Rural, on the other hand, see their promotion challenges seriously endangered by scoring only 4 respectively 5 points this month! Podium Ambition's 6 points aren't much better, though - especially considering that they raced ToA, where they scored exactly... 1 point.
Bordeaux had a pretty low-scoring month as well with 38 points, whereas there's a broad midfield starting with Pas Normal in 14th place.
Here are the details:
ToA
Mar
Sun
Eus
Total
1
Jura GIANTS
0
50
207
132
389
2
Tryg - Gobik
246
23
93
0
362
3
BNZ-Superhero Racing
94
0
24
46
164
4
BWT Hyundai N Cycling
73
0
37
30
140
5
McCormick Pro Cycling
113
0
19
5
137
6
Colombini-Adler Aalterpaint
29
0
90
0
119
7
Air New Zealand
51
22
0
36
109
8
Glanbia
66
0
37
1
104
9
Bonduelle - Eesti Energia
53
0
14
32
99
10
Staffbase - BHP
0
0
87
0
87
11
Oktal Pharma - TotalTV
0
0
75
5
80
12
Le Creuset
30
0
0
50
80
13
Eddie Stobart
49
0
29
0
78
14
Pas Normal Studios - Mikkeller
52
0
16
0
68
15
Bordeaux Metropole - Euskotren
0
0
38
0
38
16
Podium Ambition
1
0
5
0
6
17
Caja Rural Cycling Team
0
0
5
0
5
18
Bianchi - Panerai
0
0
2
2
4
19
Tafjord Kraft
0
0
0
0
0
Full Ranking
We said it earlier - the Top 4 should be safe for promotion. This is still true - but it's probably no longer 4, but 5. More on that later.
At the top, Jura have massively extended their lead, being over 600 points ahead now. They will win the division - although mathematically speaking there's a tiny chance that they won't: Colombini are racing both in Emilia and Zurich and could score 800 points - to finish 12 points higher than the Swiss... I'll let you judge if that's a possibility.
Behind, the gaps are much smaller - but still somewhat significant. McCormick hold onto their 2nd place, with a 116 points advantage over Glanbia. With just a C2 classic to race for both, the latter would need a massive depth result to somehow gain a spot.
It's much more realistic that they'd lose one, though - as Colombini are just 53 points off now and, as said before, will also race in Emilia where bigger points are at stake. So the fight for 3rd could get interesting.
So, that's it about the Top 4 - let's look at what happened behind.
In 5th place, we now have... Tryg! Indeed, they were down in 10th place in the previous update - but the gaps were so small that their huge ToA scoring made them move past all other contenders for 5th place! They were even so strong that they might be attacking the podium in an optimal case - or at least 4th place, trailing Colombini by a mere 28 points!
Tryg's big run is very bad news for the other teams hoping to take the final automatic promotion spot - as BWT, who stay in 6th place, are already 157 points down! With a maximum of 213 available with a perfect result in Zurich, needless to say that it's looking bad for their promotion ambitions by now.
Well, kind of. We all know there always are and (unfortunately) probably will be disbands, so even the fight for 6th and maybe further down will be important. And things are definitely heating up down there!
BNZ - after a decent period as well, moving up from 11th to 7th - trail by 58 points, but their advantage over Caja Rural (dropping from 5th to 8th) is just 25 points - and another 12 points down we already have Oktal!
Caja have an Emilia participation as their joker card to play - the same however holds for Tafjord, who currently are on the final Top 10 spot (dropping from 7th after not racing at all), and they definitely do have some good puncheurs! They're 52 points behind Oktal.
On the other hand, Bianchi may well be threatening that final Top 10 spot, trailing by just 9 points - a good day for one team and a bad one for the other can easily make that difference!
All other teams won't be fighting for the Top 10 anymore, but there could still be some interesting battles going on. For example between Pas Normal and Bonduelle for 12th, with just 20 points separating them. Or Staffbase, Le Creuset and Bordeaux from 15th to 17th, being 23 points apart (the latter two teams being separated by just 1 point).
The final two spots, however, aren't likely to change - the gap is just too big given the roster quality of both Podium Ambition and Eddie Stobart.
So, it looks like promotion is sealed for the Top 5 - but at least the final podium spot maybe isn't, and we still have some potentially interesting fights to watch!
Out of the Top 5, only King Saber actually raced this month - and with 51 points and another green jersey in Herald Sun Tour did so very successfully. He'll (likely) end the year with 690 points in the bag, which would almost be a Top 10 even in PCT, and equals 52% of his team's total points. A great final maxed season for the Moroccan!
Colin Stüssi, Andrew Talansky and Larry Warbasse are the division's Top 3 stage racers, and even the ToA participants couldn't change this. Vegard Breen ends up just 2 points behind 4th place and is the best (pure) cobbler.
Things are very close then in the bottom half of the Top 10, with Max Kanter, Wouter Wippert, Fausto Masnada, Szymon Rekita and Michal Schlegel being within just 28 points! However, one of them might still drop out of the Top 10, with Boswell - who dropped from 7th to 11th - just 14 points behind 10th place. Considering just Zurich, there's no other puncheur around who could still move up, but I didn't really look at those who could potentially win Emilia.
Among the notable improvers, we have mainly ToA participants, but not exclusively. For example, Rekita gained 11 spots to jump up from 20th to 9th, making it three Jura riders in the Top 10. Hoelgaard (38 -> 18), Vasyliv (50 -> 29), Krieger (63 -> 48) and most of all Zimmermann (149 -> 37) clearly capitalized on their ToA participation. Marchewka (45 -> 27) in Sun Tour and Moscon (30 -> 21) and Teuns (56 -> 43) are other riders inside the Top 50 moving up a considerable bit.
You'll find other improvers, but also some pretty big disapoppointments in this list:
Shame to see Bianchi fall out of the top-10 and away from promotion, but a very strong first season. So happy that Tryg have pulled themselves up from the first, they had a terrible start and are finally where they should be.BWT and BNZ are great teams and have had good seasons - if they do miss out on promotion it is a shame, but they should have great bases to build off or for next season.
Pretty spectacular season by Jura, congrats Fabianski! Similar to PCT, the Top 5 should be good to go but you never know how many places end up mattering for promotion, so the fights for 6th through 8th are really interesting.
In general, even if the rankings aren't kind to all of them, I think this has been a really good rookie class and I hope as many of them as possible stick around!
I'm coming for that podium! In all seriousness, very happy to be going up in our debut season. Definitely not expected but hey, we made it. I had a lot of luck but hopefully it won't run out. Good luck to all other teams on the final day.
KaiserAdler wrote:
I'm coming for that podium! In all seriousness, very happy to be going up in our debut season. Definitely not expected but hey, we made it. I had a lot of luck but hopefully it won't run out. Good luck to all other teams on the final day.
Thank you for the updates Fabi as always
"a lot of Luck" the moroccan word for this is "Saber"
Congrats to all the one who most likely will reach their goal. We had a good season to learn a lot and we did with all the stuff we did do wrong, with we i mean me here.
I wouldn't have thought we could actually climb up the rankings by mid-season, but now we go for 15th place. Finally this season kind of takes off for us, can't wait for all the months and races to come ...
Seriously: only Zuri to come for us, but Teuns should be good there (and maybe McEvoy with another surprising performance as well) so we have some hope.
Thanks for the update. Certainly happy to be looking secure. End of season has been pretty poor as Jura took off (Congrats to Fab) and we crash landed (except for the TOA). Ever since the one time I dared to suggest we could compete with Jura for first, the opposite has happened. Perhaps some of my complacency seeping into the team.
I think if it stays like this all 4 survivors from the class of 19 are in the promotion spots. So a pat on the back to us, and apologies if I am forgetting someone. But also I guess this shows that this isn't a easy game to succeed at since this is our 4th season.
Hopefully Boswell can finish strong and get back into the top 10.
There was a clear reason I decided to launch our new jersey at the back of the ToA, a truly awful race for us. And yet over 2pprd is still marginally ahead of my expectations for the season
Next season will be much better and pushing for promotion. Not quite a "worst to first" story, but close enough.
It’s not automatic promotion but I’m happy to be up in 6th. Hopefully we can hold onto it and potentially get a spot moving up with disbanding teams. Or if we don’t then we have a very strong base for next season!
Very crazy and interesting season! Jura went crazy! As did Tryg but seriously congrats to all! Keen for the last few races!
![imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg](https://imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg)
but seriously congrats to all! Keen for the last few races!
